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It's interesting that BO tries to tar the author by claiming she was terminated for violations of federal export control regulations - but she was an employee communications manager. How does such a role even intersect with that?
Reading the original essay (https://www.lioness.co/post/bezos-wants-to-create-a-better-f...) - it's a strange mix of odious sexual harassment and the seemingly trivial (pissed because the building isn't LEED).
> It's interesting that BO tries to tar the author by claiming she was terminated for violations of federal export control regulations - but she was an employee communications manager. How does such a role even intersect with that?
Surprisingly, export control regulations come in play when hiring (on H1B visa) nationals from some lucky countries like Cuba, North Korea, Iran. It is HR responsibility to comply in each and every case.
Why is someone pushing TFA again and again in HN?
HN'ers think Blue Origin is an interesting topic, I guess.
So far, it's a clear failure, but in this business everyone is a couple bad decisions away from failure anyway.
The examples here don’t seem to indicate that a 3,600 person company has a toxic culture. It’s a dozen or so complaints and it seems weird to extrapolate that to the entire org without more data.
Of course the headline is true that some employees think it’s toxic. But that’s not terribly remarkable without further info.
From the article:
"After publication of the essay, Ars spoke with several current and former employees who have provided reliable information in the past about the company. Although it is clear the essay was a product of disgruntled workers, these sources agreed that there were elements of truth in the essay. For these sources, the withering criticism of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, and his hand-picked chief executive, Bob Smith, rang especially true."
...which speaks far more to Ars upholding journalistic standards than to the essay containing a high % of quality data.
(Still, comparing Blue Origin's achievements with those of younger, likely far-less-well capitalized SpaceX...there sure seems to something badly wrong with Blue Origin.)
> that there were elements of truth in the essay.
This doesn’t sound damning at all and doesn’t seem to support the letter’s claim of toxic culture.
Is there a company that has achieved world transforming impact without at least some employees calling it “toxic”?
I agree, I think this is a penetrating and fair question to ask.
Some may feel it's dismissive of the complaints. But 95% or more of the complaints in the letter are characterizations, not descriptions. Take for example the HR executive groping another employee. What does groping mean? Brushing? Back of the hand? Possibly accidental? Grabbing? Pinching? This is a pattern with activists, using characterizations. And the executive was fired after the groping incident, which means...the system works? He was fired in spite of being a high-level exec, in spite of his personal ties to Bezos.
Another example concerns a female manager I believe who was fired abruptly. This is presented as an example of a bias in favor of men. So... no man's ever been fired abruptly? No man's ever been escorted out of the building by security? It's not allowed to fire women abruptly?
Yet another example in the letter is a man saying to a group of women something like "you need to listen to me because I'm a man". But... isn't that what feminism is? Don't feminists go to groups of men and say "You have to listen to me for no other reason than I'm a woman".
It's difficult for me to see how any thinking person can read that letter and not see it as an example of fainting feminism. [Edited, spelling, sarcasm removed]
I a woman complains about groping at a workplace and it is anything but accidental, it doesn't matter what "kind" of groping it is! It creates a hostile environment in the workplace. Sure, in this incident after the complain the person was fired. What about the hundreds of times he had done something like this and the woman because of comments like yours had NOT filed a complaint?
For your listen to me argument just "NO". It doesn't matter what your straw man feminist says, at a workplace it is NOT ok to say "you need to listen to me because I'm a man". It is also not ok to say "you need to listen to me because I'm a woman"
Westinghouse
well, low world orbit transforming impact.
Oh, not implying that BO is there yet. But Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Amazon, clearly are and have all been called toxic. Hell, even Microsoft was once extremely toxic, especially if you were in a room with Bill Gates.
Glass Door for rocket companies:
Relativity Space, Tim Ellis: 95% approve
SpaceX, Elon Musk: 92% approve
Rocket Lab, Peter Beck: 81% approve
ULA, Tory Bruno: 77% approve
Boeing, David Calhoun: 71% approve
Blue Origin, Bob Smith: 18% approve
Wow that’s the biggest piece of evidence that the letter is accurate. 18% is abysmal
These stories are true for any major defense contractor. Working at a large defense contract is always a coin flip. I know people who have loved it from day 1 ( aka people who have been there 15+ years) or have left after a year or two.
It seems defense contractors do not care for new hires. They will always give senior staff favor and not push younger staff to become better.
The Apollo program was greatly accelerated to meet Kennedy's 10 year goal and the worry that the Russians would get their first. A lot of intermediate testing was skipped.
Fortunately, things went well with Apollo 11.
It's telling that Bezos felt confident enough to personally ride in the inaugural manned launch.
Is there any evidence that testing was skipped? It seems to me, testing may likely be more robust now simply because we've learned more and have a greater understanding of failure modes, rather than previous a deliberate skimping of testing during Apollo
I've read a couple of books on how several Apollo test missions were skipped and they went straight to the landing shot. They were skipped in order to meet the time goals, and made a lot of people nervous.
One system they had big problems with were the Saturn V engines, which had a tendency to violently pogo (dynamic instability). The Russian moon program had the same problem, and they gave up on it.
Wait, she was fired 2 years ago and she's _still_ railing against Blue Origin? It doesn't seem healthy to hold onto hatred for that long.
You must never have been fired from a draining and toxic role that without the toxic part, you loved and wanted to make a career of only to get shit on and then fired and then threatened and shit on some more. Lucky.
It easily took me two years to stop letting scar tissue and impostor syndrome from affecting my professional and personal life, and I was very aware of it and working on it.
“The other signatories, a majority of whom were engineers, declined to publicly disclose their names because they did not want to jeopardize employment at Blue Origin or harm their prospects in the aerospace industry for other jobs.”
That’s not how signing works.
It's what happens when there aren't enough colleagues willing to also sign. Once a majority are willing to sign, it's a lot easier to make your name public. Unfortunately, prior to that point there is a ding you take on credibility. However, it's pretty odd for employees to want their company to get criticized like this unless it deserves it. Why start something unless its real when the consequences are fighting the first or second richest man in the world?
Or maybe they just disagree?
"It's so toxic there that I will virtue signal by non-publically signing an essay, but not toxic enough to pen my name openly and quit."
My organization had an “open letter” published that claimed hundreds of signatories but wouldn’t disclose the signatures due to fear of reprisal.
I’m not sure how effective this can be as the whole point of names signed is that they are real. A claim of signatures is not very useful.
Cynically, every time I see a “secret list of signers” I just figure the number is zero or a bazillion as it doesn’t matter.
It’s like Nixon’s “silent majority” of supporters.
> It’s like Nixon’s “silent majority” of supporters.
The term "silent majority" referred to people in the 1968 and 1972 elections who held moderate-to-conservative views that weren't represented in the mass protests and domestic terrorism of the time. Considering that Nixon won both presidential elections--1972 in an utter landslide--it turned out that the "silent majority" actually existed--quite unlike these anonymous signatories.
I get what you are saying, but then what is the solution for people who have legitimate complaints, but fear reprisal if they don't remain anonymous?
Not everyone has the luxury of being able to go up against their employer without repercussions that are worse than the original complaint. But that doesn't mean people should just have to suck it up and put up with unjust (and perhaps illegal) behavior.
"Fear of reprisal" is one of the primary measures of a toxic culture. But I get what you're saying about it almost being an unfalsifiable claim.
It seems odd to me that highly skilled aerospace engineers would have any trouble finding other jobs if they were unhappy at Blue Origin.
They have very rare skills, but also live in a small pool employers as well.
It's a small world, and painting a target on your back for employers when you need to work to feed your family and see a doctor might not be the best decision for those people at the moment.
I might agree with you if they were better organized and had more leverage. But right now, they aren't and they don't.
Spaceflight is an extremely small world. You will absolutely work with the same people at multiple companies.
"Overqualified".
> "In 2019, Blue Origin leadership requested that all employees sign new contracts with a non-disparagement clause binding them and their heirs from ever saying something that would 'hurt the goodwill of the company,'" the essay authors write. "Contracts for some departing employees now mandated they pay the corporation’s legal fees if the corporation chose to sue them for breach of contract. The inner circle of leadership tracked who signed and discussed contingency plans for those who did not."
They signed non-disparagement contracts.
> Defamation is essentially, “Don't make up bad things about us to hurt us,” while disparagement is, “Don't say bad things about us—even if they're true.” So, yes, even if your happy-hour venting session or LinkedIn post references something totally true and not malicious, it's still considered disparagement.
> all employees sign new contracts with a non-disparagement clause binding them and their heirs from ever saying something
uh what? their heirs?
How is that even enforceable?
Can you actually bind the heirs? How would that work?
Are such things enforceable in court?
Reminds me of those journalists who penned a letter against censorship but used a pen name to sign it lol.
Is this correlated with months-ago leaks about toxic culture in Amazon?
No - people have been talking about toxic Amazon culture for at least the past decade. It should be little surprise that Bezos' other enterprise is not a fun place.
Blue Origin has a toxic culture. Amazon has a toxic culture. What do they have in common?
They’re convenient targets for a new breed of muckraking so-called journalists?
Billionaire intellectuals that privately fund space programs are surprisingly unethical.